Not PC

Friday, March 17, 2006

Topless test for tolerant Holland

"Let peaceful people pass freely," is in sum the libertarian position on immigration and border controls.

And after the murder of Theo van Gogh by Islamofascists and other similar and related incidents, the Dutch position is now to be one of "let tolerant people pass freely."

In a measure just announced, potential Dutch immigrants are required to purchase and view a video tape that includes pictures of two gay men kissing in a park, and a woman emerging topless from the sea.Click here to read more ... >>

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Arthur Rackham - illustration from Wagner's Ring: Brunnhilde

Illustrator Arthur Rackham produced an entire folio of beautiful illustrations to accompany Wagner's 'Ring.' This scene comes from the last scene of the final night of the four-night 'Ring Cycle,' in which Bruunnhilde leaps into the flames, and in that act she brings about the downfall of the Gods and a new world swept clean. Wonderful stuff.TAGS: Music, Art

Off to Helengrad

I'm off to Helengrad early tomorrow to see 'Parsifal' and catch up with friends, so blogging may either be intermittent or non-existent until at least Monday. Try and cope without me.

"What's Parsifal?" I hear you ask, "and why is it on St Patrick's night?" To the second question I can only assume someone stuffed up, but a St Pad's Parsifal does give a good excuse to slip a few cans of Guiness into the auditorium.

To the first question: it's an opera by Wagner -- which means a long one -- described by Nietzsche as a “sell-out” to the Christian faith, by Tchaikovsky as a long, boring experience, and by Debussy as “the greatest monument in sound ever raised to the glory of music.” Of the all New Zealand cast featuring Donald McIntyre, Simon O'Neill and Margaret Medlyn, Bayreuth producer Keith Warner declared "you wouldn't expect to get a better cast in most opera houses in Europe."

So I'm looking forward to a great night or two.

If you want to know more (and to see the source of those quotes), this link has details of a talk on 'Parsifal' by the always illuminating Heath Lees tonight on Concert FM; this site has all the lietmotifs you need to know, and this site has almost everythelse a Parsifal-goer might need.

What academic freedom isn't

You may have heard about the case of the 16-year-old American high-school student who recorded his school teacher's rant comparing George W Bush to Hitler, which saw the teacher suspended and then reinstated after his lawyer claimed for him a 'First Amendment' right to what he calls 'free speech' and his 'academic freedom.'

Thomas Sowell points out that "there is much confusion over free speech and academic freedom" -- and ain't that the truth -- and the the teacher is mistaken on both points. On the first:

The teacher's lawyer talks about First Amendment rights to free speech but free speech has never meant speech free of consequences. Even aside from laws against libel or extortion, you can insult your boss or your spouse only at your own risk.

True enough. And on the second point:

Academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things -- teach chemistry or accounting the way you think chemistry or accounting should be taught. It is also freedom to engage in the political activities of other citizens -- on their own time, outside the classroom -- without being fired.

Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections or foreign policy. It doesn't matter whether his political opinions are good, bad, or indifferent if he is being paid to do a different job.

Only among "educators" is there such confusion that merely exposing what they are doing behind the backs of parents and taxpayers is regarded as a violation of their rights.

Perfectly clear, and perfectly true. Academic freedom is not the freedom to rant about issues irrelevant to the subject at hand; it does not grant teachers the freedom "to use a captive audience to vent their politics when they are supposed to be teaching geography or math or other subjects."

Who do you look like?

Once again, DPF has come up with a time-waster: a face recognition site that allows you to upload a photo and find out which celebrities you and your friends look like. Oddly, with two photos of myself there was no overlap of names, indicating perhaps that the face recognititon software still needs some work. Anyway, here's what it came up with for me:

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Rebuilding Auckland's Tank Farm

Auckland's 'Tank Farm' on Wynyard Point is Auckland latest political football, and looks likely to be so for the next thirty or so years. As oil company leases expire there (on land co-owned in the main by Ports of Auckland Ltd, and on the margins by Viaduct Harbour Holdings Ltd, and Americas Cup Village Ltd) forces are gathering to re-develop the area. As always in New Zealand, there are forces opposed to development, forces opposed to competition, and forces opposed to anything beyond the bland and mediocre.

'When in doubt, plant a tree' seems to be all too common a theme. Demands for parks, for open space, to ban "shops, offices and apartments" -- and presumably profits -- from the area are just so much nonsense." The new development should be democratic, not just the for the elite," says ARC councillor Sandra Coney, making the point for most of those opposed to mostly everything that makes any sense. "The Tank Farm will become a playground for the rich with the poor emptying the bins," says Heart of the City's Alex Swney, summoning up working-class envy on behalf of Queen St retailers opposed to competition to the west. Swney it is who has set up the dripping wet WeOnlyGetOneChance.Com in an effort to mobilise forces against business competition (you've probably heard his sneering radio ads). What an idiot.

Many of the comments from most of the usual suspects ignore the reality of the the proposed (and much-needed) second harbour crossing, for which Wynyard Point is an obvious and already mooted candidate. And too many ignore the excitement a hard-edged urban landscape generates when done well.

For once in Auckland, on a site representing such an enormous opportunity, it would be good if the bland and the mediocre and the suburban were overlooked, and a real hard-edged, working, urban waterfront could result. Don't think Quay St East (in fact, avoid Quay St East altogether). Think downtown Manhattan and Battery Park, or downtown Sydney and the Rocks. Or even London's Docklands and Greenwich. Think things that haven't yet been seen in this funny little city.Oddly, unexpected sense and a portion of good thoghts have been rolled out by Port's Design Team, whose concept (right and below) is simple but surprisingly strong despite some occasionally bland illustrations, a still somewhat suburban scale (particularly at the point's tip), and three grave errors: 1) not taking account of the second harbour crossing, 2) assuming there are enough people in Auckland to fill even more bars and restaurants, and 3) ignoring almost totally, it seems. the needs of the existing marine industry located in the area.

Personally, I was unhappy when the fishing boats and fishing industry were thrown out of the Viaduct (with Simunovich the solo exception). If the new developments send industry even further away I'll be very unhappy, and so will they. But despite that oversight, which can be remedied now, the Viaduct works. It's was the first time the urbanity of this great harbour city really met the water properly. And as the Herald's John Roughan argues (and I agree), it has lessons for development on Wynyard Point:

But the success of the Viaduct is not due simply to the human scale of the place. It owes at least as much to the way commercial activity is combined with public areas there. That is the formula to follow.

It does not necessarily mean more apartments, restaurants and bars but if there is a demand for them, let it happen. More likely the commercial activity would change as you proceed west from the Viaduct. The high life would give way to marine industries much as it does now.

Possibly the best thing the designers could do would be to find ways that the fish markets, boatyards and every sort of marine servicing depot could continue to operate there with more generous public access to the same waterfront.

I'm sure this would present more of a problem to planners than it would to people working or walking on the waterfront. Planners abhor chaos, but left alone people would quickly resolve so-called issues of conflicting use.

Quite right. One thing all parties seem to agree upon is that the area needs a landmark building -- an iconic building to do for Auckland's harbour what the Opera House does for Sydney's. Even Councillor Coney agrees, albeit rather wetly: "A number of people say this area needs an iconic building or structure - art galleries and museums have been mentioned. Whatever is chosen should meet a number of criteria - and be of interest to the city's diverse communities... The concept of an Arrival Museum could well fit the bill..." Good grief.

All week we've been reading of ideas for the redevelopment of the waterfront from the Viaduct to Westhaven, including the removal of the tank farm and using that commanding site for a building of Sydney Opera House significance.

I haven't heard a more exciting subject for a long time. Auckland could erect something there that would define the place, dominate the harbour and swell the hearts of its citizens forever. Sydney has done that so well that anything we do might look imitative, but give us time.

The iconic building is literally the last thing we should do. That is to say, we should do it, but not until somebody comes up with the idea that is so good, so right and natural for that location that we'll all wonder why we didn't think of it.

We'll know it when it happens ...

Maybe no other construction could match the tower for grandeur but that tank farm site will inspire something exceptional. But no matter how grand the design let's not consign it to a cultural purpose as Sydney did. Let's come up with something that will have commercial life. That's where people go.

As you can imagine I agree almost completely, except to say that I see both the last few paragraphs and that piece of land beside the Harbour Bridge as a challenge. ( "No other construction could match the tower for grandeur." You surely have to be kidding!) Landmark buildings are sadly not something Auckland has thick on the ground -- iconic and distinctively New Zealand tall buildings even less so. But on that, more soon.

Playing the music of compulsion

Airplay of New Zealand music has doubled [to 21%] since March 2002 when the government and the Radio Broadcasters Association launched a Code of Practice for New Zealand music content, agreeing to a target of 20% of local music by the year 2006. "This is a fantastic result for the music industry, and it demonstrates what we've known all along – that New Zealanders want to tune into more of their own music," [a breathless] Steve Maharey said.

Isn't that great! Isn't that fantastic! Haven't they done well!? Well, no they haven't -- or at least, this 'result' leaves us in no position to know, since as Lindsay Mitchell notes the figure achieved is the direct result of compulsion. "Back in 2001 the radio industry was told to lift their quota of NZ product or else," she reminds us. Aunty Marian Hobbs told radio stations then she expected them to "comply voluntarily... or else there is always the big stick." So as Lindsay says, "the logic is very mangey. Because radio stations did what they were told under threat of complusion the argument has been twisted to, NZers must have wanted it after all."

Expecting logic from politicians is the only thing she's got wrong here. Expect to see the 'voluntary quota' lifted on the back of this -- or else. As someone once said, if its good then they don't have to force you.

Undercutting reality in the name of science

A few of you have emailed me about the 'Philosophic Corruption of Physics' course some friends and I are running every second Saturday, asking (generally) how can philosophy dare 'diss' physics. Shouldn't the former precede the latter? Well, not exactly -- done properly, they both prove each other. But bad philosophy will soon infect the physics, as it has ever since the start of the twentieth-century.

Travis Norsen lays out the argument in a four-parter at the Objective Science site (although in a somewhat less entertaining fashion than our own course): The "post-modern philosophy of emptiness is the source of the superficiality found in so many areas of art and science today... Even the hard-nosed science of physics has not been immune to the influence of contemporary philosophy. In physics, this modern superficiality takes the form of mathematical formalism divorced from any reference to causal mechanisms, i.e., equations whose referents in the physical world are unknown and not sought."

...the problem with contemporary physics is not simply that we have equations without yet knowing the causal mechanisms behind them. That is the current state of affairs, but it is a normal, intermediate stage in the growth of knowledge. Rather, the problem is that physicists have abandoned the attempt to discover causal mechanisms. Such explanations of the equations are regarded as unimportant or impossible.

This attitude, which I call the Primacy of Mathematics, takes causal explanations to be either irrelevant to the progress of physics or inaccessible by the methods of physics. In either case, such explanations are no longer sought. This obviously stunts the growth of knowledge, since it makes physicists think they are finished understanding a given phenomenon when in fact they have only begun to describe it. Deep questions, the kind that lead to identification of underlying causes, simply no longer get asked...

What then is left of theoretical physics? Equations - along with the motto: "Calculate, calculate, calculate." Or in other words: "The equations are here; let's use them. What do they mean? Blank out."

When philosophy tells you that we can never know true reality -- that all we can know are so-called 'appearances' -- then its no wonder that mathematical formalism and appearances becomed more valued than are causality and identity. And its no wonder either that in fields from physics to politics to art to ethics that fundamental thinking and complex integrations are out. Read on here.

Free drink

Tonight in Auckland we're spoiled for choice when it comes to free drinks. The Auckland Philharmonia's Happy Hour Concert at 6 tonight is itself free, and I'm reliably informed that a) it comes with one free complimentary cocktail, and b) its fully booked. And Newmarket's Cock and Bull pub has a free beer tasting tonight from 5-8pm -- that's a free beer tasting -- to launch their new seasonal beer on tap. [Hat tip Real Beer]

The Tall Building (continued): Glass Skyscrapers - Mies van der Rohe

Bold for their time, and known chiefly in teh form of these iconic stark charcoal, ink and pencil drawings (they were never built), these striking buildings would became the 'cutting edge' of US tall-building design some thirty years later, when as Tom Wolfe described it, "row upon Mies van der Rohe of glass skyscrapers" were built along the Chicago lakefront," all over Manhattan, and out across the cities of America.

Mies's intention in cladding the buildings completely in glass was to "preserve them in their most beautiful state." You may draw your own conclusions from the fact that neither this "beautiful state" nor these beautiful drawings includes people.LINKS: Mies in Berlin - Museum of Modern ArtPlans and comments - La Defense

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Gay genes or not gay genes - it's nobody's business but their own

Here's another example today of how state control of everything from conception to cremation leads to public involvement in everyone's private affairs -- sometimes intensely private affairs -- and to 'public debate' about things that is nobody else's business but those involved.

Today's story in brief involves sperm donors, fertility clinics, the Human Wrongs Commissariat (AKA the Human Rights Commission) and claims of a 'gay gene': Once upon a time, not so long ago, a private company, Fertility Associates, began to offer a service to parents unable to father children on their own. Many parents were very, very happy and began to avail themselves of the service offered, and for a while all was good. But such work cannot be done without the state's stern and controlling eye being cast thereon.

And so it was. The Human Wrongs Commissariat soon took it upon themselves to force Fertility Associates to use sperm from gay men, which they had previously avoided due to what they perceived as the added HIV risk involved. And with that the floodgates of meddling have seemed to open. Following hard on those state heels now comes an academic revelling in the name of Assoc. Professor Sin who demands that "potential recipients of sperm from gay donors to be told that a 'gay gene' could be passed on to the child." ( Picture if you can gay sperm donors phoning Prof Sin with the worrying complaint, "Forgive me Sin, for I have fathered!")

Now, Uncle Tom Cobley and all want a say, from the Gay Association of Professionals to "genetic experts," to molecular biologists and hospital endicronologists rung by newspapers for a quote, to talkback callers and Ian Wishart and, inexorably, Brian Bloody Tamaki. "There is no proof of a 'gay gene'," says one. "Is too," says another. "Don't care anyway," says yet another, "just don't tell anyone." "Do too care," says one more, "we're polluting our gene pool." Expect to see all these people and more bothered by TV crews all day. Sheesh. Talk about a furore in a field that's none of their damn businesss anyway.

Time to pull back and reflect. Just whose business is any of this? Not yours and mine, that's for sure. Not the business of sundry experts or comments-persons. Not the business of Prof Sin or the Human Wrongs Commissariat or the Gay Association of Professionals. Why does everyone always expect a say in stuff that's just none of their damn business?! Why do you? Is that why we have a government of bloody stickybeaks -- because most of you like nothing better than to meddle in your neighbours' affairs?

This is none of your damn business! The only people whose business this is is Fertility Associates, the sperm donors they choose to use and who choose to accept their conditions, and those who choose to avail themselves of the treatment Fertility Associates offers. That's all. What sperm to use, whether or not to use sperm from gay men, and what to tell, and whether there is or isn't a 'gay gene' is the concern only of those involved. The sober reflection and the choice on the issue is theirs' to make, not yours, and you and I and sundry experts and axe-grinders should be told politely to butt right out.

And the moral of the story then? Don't let the state anywhere near your bedrooms, your test-tubes or your fallopian tubes.

Cue Card Libertarianism - Abortion

Abortion is frequently a matter of dispute among libertarians, mostly because of conflicting views on the status of the foetus. There is acceptance by both sides that if the foetus is a human being, then abortion is murder, a violation of the right to life, properly to be outlawed.

'Not PC' takes the Objectivist view that the foetus is not yet a human being, but a part of a human being – the mother – who has rights over it. As Ayn Rand points out, rights can only be held by beings who are capable of reasoning and choosing -- by human beings. A foetus is not a human being; it is a piece of protoplasm, a potential human being but not yet an actual human being.

A mother has rights; an embryo does not. Those who would refuse her the ability to abort her foetus are claiming rights over her body, and are demanding the sacrifice of actual human beings to what is until birth merely a potential.

To be an actual rather than merely a potential human being is, among other things, to be physically separate -- which a foetus is not -- and to have a brain, which a foetus has not until approximately the third trimester. As Leonard Peikoff has argued, “That which lives within the body of another can claim no prerogatives against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives or to parts of individuals.” Thus we uphold the right to abort as part of the mother’s right to ownership of her own body. We do not, however, support state-funded abortion, since anything at all funded by compulsory-acquired money is a violation of the rights of the involuntary funders.

This is part of a continuing series explaining the concepts and terms used by libertarians, originally published in The Free Radical in 1993. The 'Introduction' to the series is here. The series as it develops can be found here.

Lindzen on climate alarmism

MIT's Richard Lindzen is one of the most well-known global warming 'skeptics.' Here is a recent Powerpoint presentation given by Lindzen "rebutting alarmist climate science." As Robert Bradley from PERC notes, "he explains, among other things, how each greenhouse gas emission has less of a climate effect than the one before -- a powerful scientific law that neuters the CO2 mitigation option as the years and decades progress."

'Emigrants Crossing the Plains' - Albert Bierstadt

Monday, March 13, 2006

Voting closes today

Voting in NZ's Netguide Awards closes today at 5pm. If you'd like to vote for this blog as top NZ blog, now's your last chance.

Having said that, the best votes -- as the saying goes -- all come through the checkout. On that basis, the best votes cast for 'Not PC' in recent weeks have come through that PayPal Tip Box over there on the top right, for which I can only thank all of you who've helped buy me lunch, some long-sought-after books and things (see right), and -- this week -- you're helping me get to Wellington to see Wagner's 'Parsifal.'

The sacrifice at the heart of anti-abortion opposition

There is nothing like sacrifice to bring religionists together -- it is after all at the very heart of most world religions, and the reverence for sacrifice underpins all religionist ethics. Naturally enough then, it is also what underpins the religionists' opposition to abortion. Xavier at Kete Were observes a contradiction with anti-abortionists which he notes but can't explain:

... it is profoundly ironic that those creatures who normally occupy the 'less government meddling' part of the socio-political landscape are just so keen to make an exception in the instance of abortion law... There is a great espousal of an individual owning his or her life, and choices about that life, without 'big government meddling.'

Should, however, an individual choose to exercise personal responsibility, or choice, when it comes to owning her own reproductive life, it is entirely consistent and justified for these moralisers [say the moralisers] to advocate full and invasive state regulation into that person's life... The hypocrisy is breathtaking, but seems to slip out of these people's mouths without them appearing to even take one. The great neo-con/neo-lib chimera, a walking ideological contradiction, positively oozes hypocrisy. It would be funny if it didn't ruin lives.

It would be funny, but it's not a contradiction. The key is the reverence for sacrifice held by reigionsts of all stripes - "the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser value of a nonvalue." Note that it is sacrifice that the anti-abortionists demand from those they would stop from obtaining an abortion. Sacrifice of pleasure to astinence, sacrifice of personal ethics to the religionists' idea of duty, and -- when it comes right down to it -- sacrifice of the actual (real living people) to what is merely a potential (a foetus, not yet a human being). As Ayn Rand said on this point:

Never mind the vicous nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a 'right to life.' A piece of protoplasm has no rights -- and not life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the firt three months. To equate a potential with an actual is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former is unspeakable... Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, ie., the non-living, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives.

As Xavier says, "I don't believe that any man has the right to tell a woman, either by personal force or through legislation, what they can do with their bodies. In fact, another woman justifiably has no right to tell a woman what to do with their own body. I am not 'pro-choice'. I am 'pro-butt-the-hell-out-of-my-business'."

And so am I.

UPDATE 1: Can I suggest you head off to Sir Humphrey's and vote in their poll on abortion asking when a foetus acquires the right to life. The possible answers range from when the foetus is just protoplasm right through from when its brain is formed at the third trimester, and then to birth. I voted third trimester, ie., between six months and birth. Vote, and then join in with the comments. It seems that the basic error is given in the confusion over their title for the question, in other words the equivocation between a foetus and a child.

Greatest ever match in one-day cricket

It's being called the greatest one-day international in the history of the game. Australia score a massive, world-record score of 434 runs in their fifty overs -- 424 runs! The South African crowd expect the worst, the newspaper headlines are made up for the next day - 'South African Disappointement,' 'Tourists Score Big' etc. -- and then South Africa go out and hit 438 with one ball to spare!

Now that is top international sport. And just imagine how gutted you'd be if you were an Australian cricketer. :-)

Sunday, March 12, 2006

'The Free Radical' - the 'Death to Islam!' issue

I didn't blog yesterday because I finally grabbed the chance to devour the new Free Radical - the 'Death to Islam!' issue.

It's the best yet.

Lindsay Perigo says 'Death to Islam'; Marcus Bachler investigates what Richard Dawkins has to say about religion, and why it's 'The Root of All Evil'; George Reisman has plenty to say about Peak Oil and cartoons; some bloke called Peter Cresswell writes abut leaky houses, Nathaniel Branden, and how to sell your soul; Tibor Machan explains why Ayn Rand is so great; some Danish cartoons are published, and an honest academic is found (at Waikato, no less!)

It really is the best issue yet. Now's the time to subscribe and pick up your own copy.

The story of how Frank Lloyd Wright drew up America's finest Twentieth-Century house in the time it took the client to drive two hours to meet him is the stuff of legend. Edgar Tafel, the last remaining person left alive to re-tell the story tells all on-air to Franklin Toker -- author of Fallingwater Rising.

This week at 'Not PC'

For those of you who disgracefully missed some of Not PC this week, here's a brief summary of the best of it. Feel free to use that little e-mail button at the bottom top pass it on to everyone you've ever met...

Friday afternoon a week before St Patricks Day seems an ideal time to ponder a fairly convincing Ontological Proof of God provided by a skinful of Guinness, a pretty girl and a bright sun, courtesy of an old post at Manhattan Transfer [and a hat tip to St

Those of you have commented on John Key's speech to West Harbour Rotary in which he argues for the benefits of greater government meddling might be interested in yesterday's discussion of the speech with bFM's Simon Pound, now online.

One of Australia's most prolific architects has died. Harry Seidler (1923-2006) was an unabashed modernist responsible for many of Australia's well-known public buildings including Sydney's Australia Square and Grosvenor Place, and Brisbane's Riverside Bu

More FM yesterday ran a story saying that the Libertarianz political party supported racism. More FM now accepts that this was incorrect. Libertarianz Deputy Julian Pistorius confirmed that his party does ~not~ support racism, but it does support people's

As I mentioned when I first suggested this, "we plan to integrate BBQ, beer-drinking, physics and rugby": What could be better, eh? Schrodinger's Fridge Cat? Strange particles? The interconnectedness of everything? Beer! In a series of taped lectures...

It doesn't stop, does it. Hard on the heels of Carter's Whangamata Veto, the Communist Commerce Commission chair-thing Paula Rebstock says she wants to throw a spanner in Fairfax's plan to give TradeMe founder Sam Morgan a large cheque.

Chris Carter has done everyone a favour. He's made it clear even to the unwashed and unenlightened that meddling is in, that enterprise is out, that the separation of powers in this pathetic authoritarian backwater is non-existent, and that New Zealand op

Nursery school bosses [in Oxfordshire, UK] ordered the words of the rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep to be altered to Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep. The change was made to avoid offending children after teachers examined the nursery's equal opportunities policy. Stuart

Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building of 1905 was revolutionary. The first atrium office building -- indeed, the first atrium building of any type -- air-conditioned, fire-proof, a veritable 'cathedral of industry.'

The Wellington firebreather made short work of a stack of census forms tonight at the Botanic Gardens Soundshell, doing what he does best in front of a crowd of forty or so that included a group of scouts chanting "Burn, Census, Burn!"

This is what a meddling arsehole looks like (left). Chris Carter, MP, has just stepped in to reject the application to build a $10 million marina in Whangamata after consent for the project had already been granted by the Environment Court. Carter knows best...

...discussing 'prisoner rehabilitation' and Rachaelle Namana over the last day or so, I've kept hearing the phrase "repaying their debt to society." Prisoners, people keep saying, need to to "repay their debt to society." What on earth are they talking about?

Didn't 'we' do well. Weta Workshops's Richard Taylor is now equal Oscar-wise with Clint Eastwood, Bob Hope, John Barry and Francis Ford Coppola as the winner of five Academy Awards. Says the Dom enthusiastically: "Wellywood and Weta have done it again, with King Kong grabbing

Wow! Dr. Wafa Sultan is a secular Arab-American psychologist, whose view of Islam can best be decribed as one of absolute contempt. On February 21 she confronted radical Islamist cleric Ibrahim Al-Khouli in a debate on 'The Clash of Civilizations,' not in

When someone buys a Mercedes Benz or Jaguar, they look for quality, comfort, and detail. Size has nothing to do with the appeal of these cars. If you wanted nothing but space, you could buy a truck. Why is it, then, that some people feel compelled to buy bigger when it comes to their house, even though bigger is not always better...

Meanwhile, Libertarianz has organised a protest at the Wellington Sound Shell, with a fire breather to burn census forms. The press release states: "Libertarianz leader, Bernard Darnton, announced the event today, saying that "the census is a blatant e

In 1906 architect Louis Sullivan criticised the then-traditional bank with its classical ornament and layout in an article in The Craftsman -- read by musician-turned-banker Carl Bennett, Sullivan was challenged to "suggest how to obtain something better

Democracy, as Bill Weddell used to say, is the counting of heads regardless of content. I talked the other day about the importance in a democracy of putting things beyond the vote, so that your life, liberty and your right to pursue your own happiness ca

Good for Sam Morgan, the fomer owner of NZ's most popular website, TradeMe, the site he started just seven years ago that now accounts for sixty-percent of NZ's web traffic. He is "the former owner" because as you might have heard he's just sold it for th

Tomorrow night I shall be burning my census form. That is, I would be if I had one. Apparently I am amongst the third or so of central Aucklanders who haven't yet had a form delivered. How sad. Perhaps I'll need to download a form in order to burn it.

'The rich keep getting richer!' screams economist Paul Krugman. 'So what,' says George Reisman in his latest blog. Actually, they both say it far more learnedly than I just summarised, but what you got was the gist of it...

Four questions for you this morning: * Given that a man has been jailed last year for offending the state religion cutting down his own trees on his own property, and that yesterday a man was fined $100,000 after abasing himself before a room full of zealots...

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Recent
Comments

Topless test for tolerant Holland
Well its got to be a better way of screening people than America's infamous entry permit questions!

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of a terrorist organisation?"

Unhuh!
The scheme could pay for itself as thousands of tolerant people pay to see the tape - don't need taxes to pay for it. Funny how Switzerland is exempt but not Norway (it's not EU).
Offer 'em a ham sandwich during interval, I say!
And that is my country. Sigh. But people here probably are probably not able to understand that it is exactly these things that have led to the pending demise of Holland. Immigrants are just secondary.
Arthur Rackham - illustration from Wagner's Ring: Brunnhilde
For lovers of Wagner's "Ring", internationally acclaimed composer/pianist DANIEL ABRAMS will be presenting the American premier of his "Musical Portraits from Wagner's Ring" (from his "opera For Piano" series) on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at The Mannes College of Music, 150 West 85 St, NYC at 8 pm No charge: seating begins at 7:30 pm
Off to Helengrad
Crickey, the readers of this blog have to be explained what Parsifal is!

You might also have to explain who Wagner was and what an opera is...
Hahaha. Very good Berend. :-)

I've always assumed that regular readers of this blog are be knowledgable, musical -- and clearly people of impeccable taste - and who have undoubtedly already got their tickets and will be fronting up in Wellington tonight to see 'Parsifal.'

If not ticketed and attending tonight, they could if they wish at least join me at 2:30pm in the West Plaza Hotel bar (ground floor bar) -- it's just opposite the Town Hall I'm told.
'.. regular readers .. are .. clearly people of impeccable taste - and who have undoubtedly already got their tickets & will be fronting up in Wgtn tonight to see 'Parsifal'.

Nah. Got my ticket to the Stones in Sydney, though!
What academic freedom isn't
Who do you look like?
Linking Slob
Bravo Scott!!!
Rebuilding Auckland's Tank Farm
Notwithstanding Sydney's use of the concept, there's nothing that lends itself to an iconic waterfront building better than the concept of sails. None of the other things you associate with NZ (rugby, beaches, sheep, alps, Rutherford, Hillary) lend themselves to a building. What's more, Auckland is supposed to be The City of Sails.

I've told the council and the Heart of the City protectionists that the district plan should go and the land should be auctioned off to the highest bidders for use in what makes the most money (which might very well be the fuel companies) but I would like to see an iconic building there. It'd be rubbished mercilessly if it looked like the Sydney Opera House so something a little more akin to the iconic Dubai hotel would be good.

Any chance you'll be drawing up a design in your spare time and posting it?
Playing the music of compulsion
Undercutting reality in the name of science
'Diss', PC? Ssssss!
In my experience most practicing physicists take the instrumentalist approach you've described. If pressed for the "meaning" of QM they may express some variant of the Copenhagen interpretation but generally they'd prefer not to discuss any sort of ontological question at all.However, there are people willing to tackle the question and tackle it well. In a previous thread someone recommended David Deutsch's Fabric of Reality and I'd second that.Deutsch favours the "many worlds" interpretation and defends it well from a Realistic (capital R) point of view. Even if Deutsch's interpretation turns out to be wrong, his approach is correct - he asks what the experimental reasults mean about nature.
Bernard - It is interesting that Deutsch is a libertarian and a blogger. See here and here.

BTW, "many worlds" is not Deutch's idea: Deutsch significantly refined the theory, but the original idea is due to Hugh Everett III, one of the unsung heroes of 20th century physics.
I did not know Deutsch was a libertarian. I'd just assumed that because he was an academic that ... well ... anyway ... I'm going to enjoy looking through the two sites you linked. Thanks for the pointers.
Free drink
Having tried the new Cock and Bull beer, you should definitely go there.

Tell Luke I sent you!
A very enjoyable evening, and your name, Neil, scored me a complimentary case of Luke's fine 'Epic' ale. So I'm very happy. :-)

He's certainly very enthusiastic about his brewing isn't he -- as he has every right to be given the quality of his results.
So, not very evil at all then...
58% evil.

Mea Culpa, I've blamed a fart on someone else...
They missed a few questions that would identify the TRUELY EVIL!

How about?Voted Librtarianz Built a shed without a permitWritten a letter to an editorWarned drivers about a speed cameraRan a company sucessfullyBurnt an Official Form

;-)
The Tall Building (continued): Glass Skyscrapers - Mies van der Rohe
Gay genes or not gay genes - it's nobody's business but their own
Lovely, lovely pun. Made my morning. Keep it up (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words given topic).
'Forgive me Sin, for I have fathered'!

Beautiful. Laughed out loud, loudly!

Excellent post which I have forwarded en masse.
Back again, with a more serious point. It is actually somebody else's business, you know: it's the business of the child that results. That child is at least as intimately concerned with his/her heredity as his/her non-bio parents are.

I don't know what the Libz' view is on the right of adult humans to know their full identity (nature + nurture)without let or hindrance. It strikes me as a fundamental one.

Does that need for heredity information include parents' sexual orientation? I wouldn't say that would be my top pick! I'd think that was something the child and bio-parent could discuss at leisure in the future if, as and when they met. The key is that there be enough information for that mtg to happen.

I gather that in recent years clinic practice (not law) has been to require gamete donors to have identifying information placed in a special register that their biological children can access after they turn 18. In intent this seems to mirror the Adoption Information Act of 1986. Current clinic practice has no retroactive effect, of course. There must be a few hundred NZ children (many now adults) will never fully know who they are.

Messing around with genetic material and who people are is a ticklish business. There are no easy solutions. Adoption, abortion, insemination, there's always a price to pay.
Hi Peter

Just a quick comment about what you wrote:What sperm to use, whether or not to use sperm from gay men, and what to tell, and whether there is or isn't a 'gay gene' is the concern only of those involved.

Isn't that exactly the point behind the whole debate. The problem in that those involved are on different sides of the debate.

By the way, I don't know if you listened to nine-to-noon this morning, but the gay gene section was a piece of comedy that couldn't have been scripted better. Worth a listen."Back again, with a more serious point. It is actually somebody else's business, you know: it's the business of the child that results."

But that child does not presently exist. And when it does come to exist it will be because of the choices made today by its parents now. And when it is born, they're entitled to make decisions on its behalf, and to speak on its behalf. No one else is.

"There are no easy solutions." Well, there are when we all mind our own business. :-P

"Isn't that exactly the point behind the whole debate. The problem in that those involved are on different sides of the debate."

Don't understand that at all. The decision is one to be made voluntarily between Fertility Associates and those seeking their services -- in this context, the decision for the former is what information to make available; the decision for the latter is whether or not that is enough. Between them, it's up to them to come to some voluntary agreement as to what they're prepared to offer and to accpet.

And what they decide is none of our business.

"'Forgive me Sin, for I have fathered'!"

And I have to confess that I pinched that line from an Irish humourist back in the early nineties, who used it when an Irish priest got rather too friendly with one of his female parishioners and then ran off to the Phillipines to see Cardinal Jaime Sin, and to confess his paternity. I've been dying to use it ever since. :-)
What most people ignore is that so much reproduction goes on everyday, with the people involved not the slightest bit concerned about the genetics - except whether the other person gets them horny or not (which is a form of selection). Many of them pay no regard to means to raise a child, and even people convicted of murder, rape and molesting children can procreate.

Yet there is an enormous hoo ha about this.
Cue Card Libertarianism - Abortion
So are you saying you are against third semester abortions as the foetus has a brain by then?
And also, if someone is in a coma - and lacks the ability to reason, then is it ok to kill them?
Good question David. On that I'm not entirely convinced (regarding abortion within third trimester), but I was almost persuaded a few years back after a very long discussion. As I indicate above, the important question with abortion is determining the status of the foetus. Killing a human is murder. Killing a piece of protoplasm is not.

In the first and second trimester then the situation is unquestionable: the foetus is pre-human, and abortion is a woman's right. Once the third trimester arrives however things are less clear-cut, but the issue of third-trimester abortions should not be used to confuse the issue of abortion per se: for most practical purposes abortion is what takes place in the first- and second-trimester, and about that there is no question: as Leonard Peikoo says, "You cannot be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue."

So that said, here's some 'thinking points', below (which were intended only to be short points, but which grew as I wrote -- clearly fairly pregnant points it seems):

* The practical question is important here. How common are third-trimester abortions? Answer: not very. Third-trimester abortions are rare, since they are a much greater danger to the pregnant woman's own health, and generally it is possible to obtain an abortion at an earlier date. Generally possible, but not ~always~ possible, but usually by the time third trimester has arrived the choice has been made: to give birth if you can. (Usually, but not always.)

* Third trimester abortions are generally only used at present for the preservation of the life of the pregnant woman -- in other words she's going to die unless the foetus is removed. No one but a zealot could disallow this: if the woman's life is at risk then disallowing the procedure is murder. Clearly in such a cases then the life of the 'host' should not be sacrificed to that of her 'guest' -- and it's absurd to place such 'rights' in conflict -- and therefore to describe as murder removing that foetus in such a case would be just plain wrong.

* So then, if you can allow that in cases of danger to the pregnant woman third-trimester abortions are not murder, then you must also allow the same for all other cases. In other words, it's either murder of a human being or it's not, and the health or otherwise of the mother is irrelevant to that particular question.

* The 'viability' question becomes important in the third trimester - that is, can the foetus survive outside the womb? -- and this of course became the crucial cut-off point decided upon in Roe v Wade. But it is not really helpful in view. If the pregnant woman's life is under threat from her pregnancy in the third trimester and the baby is ~wanted,~ then once again the law is not needed: the foetus will be removed and medical care undertaken to attempt to keep it alive. And as we noted above, for the most part, most mothers seeking third-trimester abortions are in the situation of wanting their birth, and wil be only too interested in its 'viability.'

* So the law would not be needed in such a case: As I said in the post above, "To be an actual rather than merely a potential human being is, among other things, to be physically separate" -- if (amonng other things) this condition is demonstrably reached, then the rights and protections appropriate to all humans kick in in any case.

* The 'viability' question therefore only arises if the baby is ~unwanted~ in the third trimester. And there is no way to determine ~for sure~, in advance, before removal of the foetus, whether exactly the foetus has yet reached 'viability' or not. So as a legal 'cut-off' point, the viability test on its own is not a good one.

* The thing is then to provide an objective legal cut-off point for determining when the status of human being has clearly reached, so as to be able to say on side of that line: 'Here is removal of cells'; and on the other: 'Here is murder of a human being.' A legal line needs to be established somehere, and with it you're trying to draw a discrete boundary somewhere within a nine-month time period that is by nature not discrete at all, but continuous. To me the only viable line is birth. But as I said above, I'm still open to persuasion, but only on the lines I've suggested." And also, if someone is in a coma - and lacks the ability to reason, then is it ok to kill them?"

Short answer: No. With some caveats.

Long answer: See what I said on the Terry Schiavo case -- which for the life of me I can't find at the moment and I;m just heading off... Try Googling in the meantime. ;^)
The abortion argument is so usually so ridiculously simplistic on both sides.

Abortion is not a question of people who want to kill their babies versus people who don't understand that I have a right to control my body; as per your above comment,it is a complicated question of conflicting rights. As the cost of pregnancy, in terms of heatlh, money, and social stigma has gone down, people are worrying less about the rights of the woman to control what happens in her body, and more about the right of the foetus to get born. I don't really agree with that. Conservatives can't have it both ways - they don't want abortions, but they don't want to pay women welfare.

I read this on a US site -

The position of the (Democratic) Party needs to be "We are pro-choice. Some of us believe that abortion is morally acceptable. Some of us find it repugnant. Some of us just aren't sure. But ALL of us believe that the government, which is incapable of fairly and effectively policing traffic violations, has neither the right nor the ability to reach a binding decision on difficult moral issues such as this."

You can't say better than that for those on the more liberal side of the aisle - and it goes for all reproductive technology IMO.
PC, you will find that the idea that a foetus is a piece of protoplasm is completely incorrect. Protoplasm, (according to wikipedia) is the living substance within a cell. A foetus is made up of, oh, I don't know, maybe trillions of cells, each with the exact same genetic makeup that the foetus will have when born. The only difference between foetus and born baby, or even an adult is the only the level of maturity. Which seems to vary widely from adult to adult.

Maybe Ayn Rand said what she did about protoplasm before ultrasound, back when there were myths about what actually went on in the early stages of pregnancy, back before we had windows into the mysteries of the womb.
For my part in this debate (at Sir Humphrey's) I have been treating the discussion as having distinct parts to it.

I believe killing a foetus is killing a person (pick at 10 weeks if you need a number that matches a clearly human form).

Arriving at the truth of the action (as I see it) is a completely separate discussion as to what society might do about it, and what I think the women's rights or options might be in the matter.

I also don't buy the argument that if a baby can't live outside the womb, it by definition is killable (as some-one mentioned somewhere). It needs that environment (or a man-made one) like an Eskimo needs a fur coat and an ice hut. Or an astronaut needs a space suit and oxygen tank.

Finally, I listened to the 10 minute rave by Leonard. Firstly "Pro-Life" terminology is exactly why I see the first part of the discussion separate - the issue of rights and property etc just clouds the issue of the reality of the action.

One thing is clear to me, and has been mentioned with dismay by the pro-choice group - the line where a baby is considered a baby is being moved back. The side effect of premature babies that live, and ultrasound photos that reveal. It's called facing up to the truth.
Here's the issue in a nutshell. A foetus is not a human being. A foetus is pre-human. Whatever you want to call that collection of cells, it is not an actual human being, it is merely a potential human being.

To confuse the two is foolish. To surrender an actual human being with what is merely a potential is ludicrous. And to demand that someone else accede to your foolishness -- that is, to demand control of their very womb -- is somewhere approaching abhorrent.
My definition of what is a human being is a creature that is identified by his or her genetics to be human, as opposed to an animal or a plant. What is your definition, PC? What is the process whereby, "protoplasm" or a pre-human becomes human? Do you have a scientific explanation?
You seem to be placing the focus of being a human being on the development of the brain. But neural tissue develops very early, and if you consider the commencement of conciousness to be beginning of being 'human' (no, I know you didn't, but one might), and that neural activity indicates conciousness, then the foetus is human from a very early age.

I think a much more pragmatic argument is warranted. Basically, if you don't provide the facility for an abortion, then the would-be mother will go to great lengths to try to get rid of it her own way, be it a black market abortion as happened in NZ before abortion was legalised or a bottle of gin in a cold bath. And this is very hard to prevent, right or wrong.
Here it is in a nutshell - if you remove a child from the womb and it lives (with a bit of medical help), then it is a human.

A potential adult is called a child. A potential child is called a baby. They are all human.

It is where some-one draws the line. Drawing it from birth doesn't work anymore.

Deeper investigation will reveal that 23 weeks is still a viable human, with modern technology. That alone is reason to keep an open mind on where the line should be in determining what is a human, surely?
The status as a human has also got enormous ramifications for the status of the woman's body from that point onwards, and even before.

For example, if a foetus has rights as a human being from a certain point (let's say 6 months), at that point the mother faces certain obligations. This would include NOT smoking or drinking alcohol, or indeed any actions that could damage the foetus, short of extreme cases where abortion is needed to save her life. In effect, the foetus in that case is being force fed poisons, and that would be morally unconscionable if it had rights - no different from if the mother injected it into the child once born. This is the sort of case common law should deal with - you can imagine a father suing a mother who is a heroin addict for child abuse.

Before it has rights, then she has the absolute right to abort.

The alternative is to claim that women, when knowingly pregnant, have some obligations towards the foetus - which while appealing on one level (deterring foetal alcohol syndrome et al), could be highly interventionist.
ZENTIGER: "A potential adult is called a child. A potential child is called a baby. They are all human."

A potential baby is called a foetus. And it is pre-human. The line to be drawn is when it becomes human. As I note above, there are arguments for saying this occurs in the third-trimester, when the conceptual faculty is formed, but I'm as I say in that comment I'm not sure that on its own is justification for banning third-trimester abnortions. But on that particular point I am still willing to be convinced.

LUCYNA: "My definition of what is a human being is a creature that is identified by his or her genetics to be human, as opposed to an animal or a plant. What is your definition, PC?"

The condition of judging what is a human being and what is not is not judged by the genitic code of a portion of tissue, but by whether the conditions for being human are met by the entire being, with the being's full context being considered. In that sense then, the best definition for man is that given by Aristotle: "Man is the rational animal."

SAM: "I think a much more pragmatic argument is warranted."

All you say is true, Sam -- tragically so -- but if it were indeed murder then none of those problems you cite would be an argument for making murder legal. YOu can't escape the key point so easily, which is that the foetus is not human, it is pre-human.
PC: 'To confuse the two (human being/foetus) is foolish'.

Were it that simple, Peter.

The second I found out that my sister was pregnant, I was talking about 'the baby'.

Never 'cells', 'protoplasm' or 'the foetus'.

Lucyna makes a valid point. Technology is fast providing crystal-clear images of the womb, as opposed to those of the early grainy, 'bad-reception B&W TV' type.

Pretty hard to be clinical when the procedure is visual to all & sundry, as opposed to only the surgical staff ...
It *is* foolish to confuse a foetus, dependent on its hosts body for succour, and an independent human being.

Reseach has shown that women who are given an ultrasound of the foetus prior to having an abortion often change their minds - so there you go. Maybe the taxpayer should pay for that - something I doubt will find favour with conservatives.

It takes some pretty fancy mental footwork to claim abortion is the moral equivalent of meeting your offspring 10 years later in the street and shooting them - which is what'pro-lifers' are saying. Yet you hear this quite often from people who are quite intellectually gifted.
PC: "A potential baby is called a foetus. And it is pre-human. The line to be drawn is when it becomes human."

Exactly. And we continue to disagree on that line.

Your opinion on whether something can be killed without moral consequences also seems to rely on the concept of who has rights. Is this correct?

Ruth: (hello BTW), I'm a pro-lifer and I'm not saying killing a baby at 2,6, 10, 13, 20, 23 or 28 weeks with forceps or drugs is the same as killing a 10 year old with a gun. I might not be intellectually gifted (but please don't agree too quickly), but I do hear that argument put forward more by the pro-abortionists so they can make the comparison and then ridicule it.

This is the kind of hot topic that the danger of saying one thing often has the reader assuming there is a "therefore this other stuff follows" kind of argument. It doesn't.

I'm saying that killing foetus at some point in its cycle is averting a natural outcome that produces life, and that needs to be faced up to. It's killing a human, in the category of pre-born. How that gets reconciled with a women's rights and the other mix of issues is a different problem, and one for which I personally have not reached a conclusion.

Ultimately, society needs to focus on the timeline much earlier so less people are in that situation.

I also wonder if abortion was harder to get, if it would effect a change in sex habits over time, or if morning after pills and backyard operations would simply be in higher demand.
"It's killing a human, in the category of pre-born."

I think that logic falls down, as it is thee same as saying sperm and eggs are a category of pre-conception, implying contraception is wrong, as you could say preventing and male and a female from meeting is wrong, as it destroying the potential of a human being. Therefore, you have to define a point at which something becomes human, which can only really be when they develop a reasoning mind.

You can't destroy what you haven't got.
Hi Zen - yes I do think you are intellectually gifted ;-).

When you say potential = actual you are saying foetus=baby=child=adult which is saying abortion is the eqivalent of meeting your 20 year old offspring in the street and shooting them. Which it is not.

To my mind it is not a question of when the foetus becomes 'human' - I believe that one does acquire rights until one is born. Rights do not apply to the unborn. That is not a difficult concept to understand.

IMO it is only a matter of time before women are sent to the pokey for having abortions. It was only recently that an edict in the US to require women to report miscarriagest to the police was overturned. Already birth control is under threat - the position of the Catholic Church that contraception is akin to abortion is gaining ground every day. Look at Kansas.

When women are denied reproductive choice, that affects men who will become fathers against their wills, too. We fight for women’s equality because it makes our society stronger and all its members better off.
Ruth: 'Research has shown that women who are given an ultrasound of the foetus prior to an abortion often change their mind, so there you go.'

Yes, I'm aware of that. The point of continually clearer imagery of *human* creation cannot be ignored. But either way, the decision is a matter of choice.

Ruth: 'Maybe the taxpayer should pay for that - something I doubt will find favour with the conservatives'.

The taxpayer 'should' no more have to pay for a woman's pregnancy scan than they should have to pay for an abortion, hysterectomy or appendectomy.

An old libertarian philosophy: Never let anybody 'should' on ya! :)
Lindzen on climate alarmism
How are your shares in bird flu going?
'Emigrants Crossing the Plains' - Albert Bierstadt
And yes, the sunsets in Kansas do look that dramatic!
I love this pic, Peter. Thanx for posting it.
Voting closes today
The sacrifice at the heart of anti-abortion opposition
Your logic is odd. No baby can live without the support of adult humans and yet you seem to argue it has far more "potential" to life than a foetus.

But by correcting your logic, infanticide is allowable?

Or in other words - it does not follow from your line of logic on foetuses that a baby should have the right to live - unless its "potential" to live exists regardless of the input of the parents.

By the way, I don't believe a foetus gains full rights as a human being until after it is out of the body of the mother. But that is because it is biological dependent on the mother, and without the mothers continuing biological input it perishes. That to me gives the mother the ultimate moral right to determine the direction of the pregnancy, certainly above a government. But that doesn't mean I morally agree with women terminating a foetus for their own convenience, nor do I agree with some of the methods of abortion - for example I do not think foetuses in their 2nd trimester should be ripped limb from limb to terminate them.
Actually that should read 'the ultimate physical right' to determine the direction of the pregnancy.
What a woman can do to HER body? As soon as the baby is conceived, the woman is no longer in control of her body. From a strictly biological POV.

My view is, err on the side of life. The usual counter-argument i hear to this is, a foetus isnt alive in the human sense, which does nothing but make me more pro-life.

Kimble
PC,

I enjoy the site immensely. That is not going to stop me from dis-agreeing totally on this one.

There is nothing inherrent in freedom that allows murder. Abortion is murder.
I have always thought that article was one of Peikoff's best.

Another contradiction...we have all manner of conservatives championing that deadbeat in the so-called "Roe vs Wade for Men" case, saying (quite rightly), that both men and women have a right to control what comes out of their bodies.

Actually, only men have total rights to control what comes out of their bodies. At a certain point in the process of pregnancy, the state takes over this right for women. So for those of you who think men should have more rights than women, well, they do.
Because some of what comes out of the womans body is another person. Statistcily that person is half female too.

This is another trick often used by pro-abortionists, removing the thrid party from the debate. We arent talking about a baby, nooooo, this is merely a discussion of what a woman can do with her excretions. Right. Lets just ignore the baby, they dont matter anyway.

Kimble
The corollary to the argument that a foetus in the first three months is a piece of protoplasm with no rights is that foetuses are potentially tradable commodities. So two questions for those on the pro-abortion side of the fence (and that includes me!):

(1) Are you willing to support a completely free market in foetuses?

(2) If it becomes possible to remove living foetuses from the womb and to rear them artificially, what are the obligations of the buyer of such a foetus? For example, could the buyer of a living foetus experiment on it, provided that it is subsequently terminated in a timely fashion?
[1] Yes. And born babies, too!

[2] The buyer has the same obligations as parents: i.e., none whatsoever. The only obligation parents have to their children is the same obligation all humans have to one another: not to initiate aggression. (Of course, most parents love their children, and choose to take care of them)

Read This!
Thanks for that link Yacap. It clarified some of issues for me.
Greatest ever match in one-day cricket
Unbelievable. What a bugger I'm not in Sydney for another month. :)

I suspect that most Australian-based Kiwis will have a very pleasant day, today!
Getting down with an Imam
Shouldn't that be:Shoot your guns in the air like you just don't care...Kill the infidel everywhere...A night club here, a bus stop there...Let them live their lives in fear, yo!
Heard in the big city
'The Free Radical' - the 'Death to Islam!' issueDeath To Islam

Sounds a bit severe.
PC

Thanks for the link to Lindsay’s article from the Free Radical. It is when I read articles like this that I stand back in awe of the author. I see a painting that grabs my attention , read a poem or hear the words of a song that transports me temporarily to some other time, some other place, and I think – why can’t I do that? Well, I have other talents. But that doesn’t stop me being envious of those who can put into words exactly what I would want to say about a particular event or situation.

Islam IS evil – it should be shouted from the rooftops, it should be expressed in every available western media outlet. And yes! We should ridicule these ridiculous bastards at every available opportunity. Ridicule, and support for ridicule from the highest authority is the best way of defeating this barbarity.

Viva la ridicule!

Viva la Free Radical!
Agree with LL re the power of ridicule. Something I try to do in my own small way.

PC: 'Waikato, no less!'

Yes! I did a double-take; my first thought being 'misprint'!
/* Some of the runners-up for the cover of TFR this issue....

Death to Destiny Church!

Death to Scouting New Zealand!

Death to Shinto!

Death to The Salvation Army

Death to St Stephens Anglican Church!

Death to St Bedes Colledge!!

Death to Parnell Christian Woman's Knitting Circle (meets every second Sunday at Jubilee Hall, bring your own wool and scones)!! Yahh!

/*

Sounds a bit severe?
Rick,

I don’t have a problem with “Death to Islam”.

We need to look at the definition of death. I suppose the opposite of death is life and that death therefore is the irreversible loss of the function of life (when described in biological terms). But death could also be described as the extinction or cessation of anything that exists even if it does not possess life as we would define it. Islam exists and therefore can be killed off.

Lindsay is not calling for the death of all practicing Islamists (that would be severe), just the extinction of their ridiculous beliefs. Neither is he calling for a nuclear solution or napalm or poison gases. Now I admit, ridicule can be pretty hurtful to the sensitive but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Death by ridicule to an evil system of brainwashing. Yes! I’d be all for that.

Ridicule away to your hearts content the Parnell Christian Woman’s Knitting Circle if you feel inclined Rick but you won’t get any support from me I’m afraid – sounds a bit severe! And as far as I know they aint bothering anyone else.

Islamism on the other hand is bothering lots of people. Islam is a very old and very successfull, peaceful, way of life. It's a shame TFR can't tell the difference and a relief that Alexander Downer can.
Best Free Radical cover yet, IMO.
I'm worth more. How about you?
This week at 'Not PC'